Chinese New Year got you down? Even though its easier than ever to have your own PCBs made in China, being able to roll your own is a valuable skill to have, from simple-but-large designs, to the annual 2 week hiatus in electronics manufacturing known as “Chinese New Year.”

On Saturday, March 16th, Learn how to make your own PCBs using nothing more than some copper-clad board and dangerous household chemicals! Walk away with yet another Arduino clone!

This October, from Saturday the 20th to Sunday the 21st, pit your building skills against 9 other teams attempting to assemble the finest food-flinging machines in the world!

Your challenge is to build a machine in 24 hours (or less) that can fling the tastiest foodstuff the longest distance with the most style. Teams can bring in any supplies they want (up to $150 worth– We will be asking for receipts at the door!), but you can’t put anything together until the start of the competition. From then on out, it’s a free-for-all to build your contraption using the supplies you’ve brought in alongside the supplies at the LVL1 hackerspace.

As with last time, buy only one ticket per team! One ticket gets your entire team in the door! Try to think of a team name before you show up!

At the end of the competition, teams will judge eachother in the following categories:

Taste: How delicious is it, after being flung?

Distance: How far did you fling it?

Ingenuity: How well-built was your flinger? How crazy?

Appearance: Is your food recognizable on the other end?

Scores in each category will be averaged, and the top three teams will receive their assorted glory.

The rules:

$150 budget, not counting parts from the boneyard at LVL1

Must be built in 24 hours (nothing preassembled!)

Team size is unlimited (in either direction), but 3-6 is recommended

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at BradLuyster@gmail.com

On August 26th, from Noon to 4pm, we’re going to cover software on the Arduino.

This is different from other workshops we’ve done on Arduino. We’ll cover the IDE, built-in Libraries, their uses and pitfalls. We’ll go over the current Arduino sheild ecosystem, investigate embedded C best-practices, and more!

This workshop will be strictly BYOA (bring your own Arduino), and will run about 4 hours. Feel free to stick around afterwards to ask any questions we didn’t cover. Buy your Arduino from Radioshack, Sparkfun, or any number of other online vendors. Bring your laptop and a USB cable, and we’ll make the Arduino sing.

Here’s a detailed list of topics covered:

What is a Microcontroller?

What training wheels does Arduino provide?

What are sheilds?

What are libraries?

Getting into the IDE

Blinkenlights

Built-in Peripherals

Pitfalls

Basic embedded C techniques

Going beyond Arduino

If there’s any particular topic you’d like to dive deep into, email me at BradLuyster@gmail.com

KiCad is a free utility for designing and laying out printed circuit boards. Printed circuit boards connect your circuits together without the need for breadboards and jumper wires. With circuit prototyping services cheaper than ever, it’s simple to turn your design into a real, working board.

This workshop will cover the basics of KiCad, from Schematic Capture, to Board Layout, you’ll walk out of the workshop with the knowledge necessary to take your circuit ideas from dream to reality.

If you’re already familiary with Eagle, KiCad has a number of advantages, including unlimited board size, up to 16 copper layers on your board, multiple sheets of schematic, and more.

Please install KiCad before coming to this workshop. If you have any problems, or questions, don’t hesitate to let us know. If you need help installing KiCad, show up early and we’ll try to help you out.